Ecotheology and the Practice of Hope

Anne Marie Dalton, Henry C. Simmons

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781438432984
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Is there any hope for a more sustainable world? Can we reimagine a way of living in which the nonhuman world matters? Anne Marie Dalton and Henry C. Simmons claim that the ecotheology that arose during the mid-twentieth century gives us reason for hope. While ecotheologians acknowledge that Christianity played a significant role in creating societies in which the nonhuman world counted for very little, these thinkers have refocused religion to include the natural world. To borrow philosopher Charles Taylor's concept, they have created a new "social imaginary, " reimagining a better world and a different sense of what is and what should be. A new mindset is emerging, inspired by ecotheological texts and evident in the many diverse movements and activities that operate as if the hope imparted by ecotheology has already been realized. While making this powerful argument, Dalton and Simmons also provide an essential overview of key ecotheological thinkers and texts

1

THE SOCIAL IMAGINARY AND THE ECOLOGICAL CRISIS

Vast, hideous, and desolate

—William Bradford
on glimpsing the New World.¹

William Bradford's description of the New World contrasts sharply with that of Thomas Berry. To Bradford the natural wilderness, although well inhabited by North American native peoples, was desperately lacking in the signs of modernity—that is, of human progress; it needed taming, subjugation, and human artifact. To Berry it was the Eden we have since wrecked; in his words: “When we came to this continent, it was a glorious land of woodlands and prairie grasses … a land of abundance.”² This contrast sets in bold terms the question: How did we get to this place in history we now describe as an ecological crisis? The answer, put simply, is Western modernity.³

This chapter will first complicate this response but not deny it. It will address the elements in the development to the present Western way of life that have led us to such a poignant moment, in which the future of the planet is at stake. These are elements that will be quite familiar to most of our readers and are certainly present in many of the ecotheological texts we will examine in the chapters ahead. Second, this chapter will propose a framework for a deeper understanding of the nonintentional, even oblivious, way in which the construction of a Western modernity as described by Charles Taylor produced the “wrecks of Eden.” Western modernity, however, is not a rigid, static construction. It has been and continues to be malleable. The social imaginary carries its own potential for change, even radical change, and it is here that the hope for a better future, within a Western perspective, at least, can be envisioned and accomplished. Third, this chapter will address the particularity of vision brought by Christian ecotheology texts to the hope for a more ecologically sound social imaginary. Our argument is that as engaged texts they may play a significant role in the shifting of our imagination and practice. For that to happen, however, there must be an understanding of the location of religion within Western modernity.

How did Western modernity as we have constructed it result in such a “wreck of Eden”? Two elements that are reflected in the earlier comment of Bradford are the dominance of a scientific worldview and the shift from a cosmic-centered to a human-centered perspective on the universe. A scientific worldview is not merely a physical science-based view; it refers to the merging of the notion of history as humanly controlled progress with the development of powerful technologies. The virtual eradication of the idea that humans were subject to a divine will or to Fate in some form translated into the further idea that there was virtually no limit to the progress that could be accomplished with the right knowledge and tools. For all of this the natural world was merely the resource. The conviction was that it would only be a matter of time before disease, poverty, and illness would be under control.

The shift from a cosmic-centered to a human-centered perspective is really another thematization of the same reality. The perception that human society ought to fit in some way into a cosmic order as reflected in the seeming predictability and graceful movement of the planets, the seasons, and life and death in the organic world, gave way over time to notions of society that were unrelated to the physical world. The pre-Copernican worldview had the earth at its center. Humans gained their importance from their geographical location on earth as the center of the cosmos. In the post-Copernican view the centrality of planet earth no longer held. Human importance now had to be constructed apart from the earth; most notably humans were seen as the only beings made in the image of God. Human society sat on top of the creation; creation was a mere backdrop for the important work of building a better future, whether this was to end in this world or in some supernatural world. These broad strokes were not obvious overnight, but can be seen only in retrospect. Various scholars, including those whose texts we consider in later chapters, have focused on the components of these historical shifts. Taylor considers them within his description of the construction of a social imaginary that is our present Western modernity.

THE SOCIAL IMAGINARY OF THE WEST

Taylor uses the notion of the social imaginary, which originated in the social sciences, to provide a framework for understanding how we got to be where we are, and also for understanding how societies can change. Thus, there is not only one social imaginary, but rather there are multiple social imaginaries, in fact, as many as there are recognizable actual and potential societies.⁴ Taylor's concept of social imaginaries emerges from an historical discussion about the construction of human communities, which has deep roots in Western scholarship.⁵ In particular, Benedict Anderson's notion of imagined communities helps to locate Taylor's notion of social imaginaries within that discussion. Anderson's explanation of how a nation is imagined is most relevant to our use of Taylor's concept in that it elucidates the nuanced meanings of “imaginary.”⁶ According to Anderson, nations are imagined because they consist of members we will never meet or know. Yet we imagine ourselves in some sort of communion with them all. Thus, nations are invented not awakened. As a departure from previous scholars' understanding of “invention,” Anderson associates invention (as does Taylor) not with fabrication and falsity, but with imagining and creating.⁷ The nation is imagined as limited; it has set boundaries, even if elastic, outside of which lie other nations. It is imagined as sovereign; the idea of nation was conceived at a time when the notion of a divinely ordained authority was losing legitimacy. The nation, finally, is also imagined as a community; a fraternity or comradeship to which one is committed enough to lay down one's life.

These notions of the nation as imagined community as well as Anderson's work on its cultural roots are brought forward into Taylor's conception of a social imaginary. What Taylor adds is the focus on the interweave of theory and practices that constitute the dynamics of the imaginative process by which one creates a society. Furthermore in using Western modernity as an instance of social imaginary at work, he focuses on the very theories and practices critiqued by ecotheologians of late twentieth century as coalescing in an ecologically unsustainable society. On the other hand, by articulating the apparatus by which one constantly constructs and reconstructs a social imaginary, Taylor offers (intentionally or not) a potential means by which even this ecologically indifferent or even hostile social imaginary of the West can be redirected. According to Taylor, the social imaginary is “not a set of ideas, rather, it is what enables, through making sense of, the practices of a society.”⁸ The term carries the notion that societies develop as a result of the application of imagined futures.⁹ Evidence that sustained effort from different starting points over time can effect change in the social imaginary forms the basis for hope. The community of scholarship on religion and ecology of the last several decades has already helped shape a more ecologically sensitive social imaginary. It is different from but also identifiable within the present Western social imaginary, which has virtually excluded ecological concerns. It represents a redirection of the manner of human life based on a new imagination. Yet, it rests on the basic principle that ideas and practice in the service of powerful convictions and imagination regarding a future are effective over time.

“Central to Western modernity,” Taylor argues, “is a new conception of the moral order of society.”¹⁰ Taylor is speaking of the emergence of a set of ideas and practices in social forms that characterize modernity in the West. These include, preeminently but not exclusively, the market economy, the public sphere, and the self-governing people.¹¹ The social imaginary, then, refers to the way in which people imagine their manner of living together. The source of the particular imagined existence may begin with the articulation of certain ideas, but it is the images, stories, and legends that grow out of or mutate from these ideas that form the social imaginary. While a theoretical understanding is often clearly grasped only by a few, many share the social imaginary. The social imaginary is “that common understanding that makes possible the common practices and a widely shared sense of legitimacy.”¹²

Furthermore, the social imaginary is both factual and normative. It is at the same time recognition of how things usually work and how they ought to work. The social imaginary of a particular modernity or a given society governs all social behaviors, such as how to conduct oneself at a social gathering or how to negotiate the fair treatment of competing interests. While the concept of the social imaginary may seem abstract, it is immediate, practical, and essential for society. For example, it legitimizes a particular school curriculum, adequate school behaviors, tests and standards, and anticipated outcomes (including acceptable retention and graduation rates).

The social imaginary cannot be understood only in terms of an articulated history. Besides the existence of ideas and events that led to the present imaginary there is a large and inarticulate understanding, a “wider grasp” of such questions as “how we stand to each other, how we got to be where we are, how we relate to other groups and so on.”¹³ As Taylor explains,

This wider grasp has no clear limits…. It is in fact that largely unstructured and inarticulate understanding of our whole situation, within which particular features of our world show up for us in the sense they have. It can never be adequately expressed in the form of explicit doctrines because of its unlimited and indefinite nature. That is another reason for speaking here of an imaginary and not a theory.¹⁴

In creating and sustaining the social imaginary, practices and their meanings work together. Understanding often gives rise to practice, but practice itself carries an understanding. Usually a common understanding precedes any kind of theory about why those involved might act in this way. Thus, for instance, we all know how to operate toward each other within different social spaces, how to respect boundaries of a political demonstration, how to organize and carry out an election.¹⁵ A striking example of this is the enduring anger of many Americans towards the Supreme Court for its decision favoring Bush over Gore in the American presidential election of 2002.

While largely recognizable as continuous over time, practices and their meanings change, sometimes slowly and organically, but sometimes quickly and abruptly. When practices begin to change and boundaries are consistently transgressed, we are probably in transition. Idealizations, theories, and ideas grow into a complex imaginary as they are incarnated in new practices or associated with old ones that are transformed by that process.¹⁶ Examples include the ways in which ideas of Karl Marx or Adam Smith inform present practices in Western societies. The original ideas may be barely recognizable in important segments of societies, because of creativity and practical applications (as well as human self-interest and greed). Likewise, the visions and ideas of the Christian reformers of the sixteenth century are still recognizable today in mainline Christian churches. These reformers, however, would likely be shocked at particular practices and views to which their visions have given rise.

It is clear, then, that the social imaginary of a group is not merely the fruit of a well-reasoned theory, a vision of the imagination, or useful practices. It is rather the combination of these as they enter the process of human living and the struggle to fulfill both the basic and higher needs and desires that govern life together.

In the West, this combination has come to produce what is commonly called Western modernity. It is not the only possible modernity. Different sets of ideas, visions, and practices or other ways of relating the theories and practices could have produced a quite different society. What we have is the contingent way in which history shaped our present modernity in the West. It is in this modernity that the ecological crisis emerged and must be confronted. The key forms, as Taylor describes them, all hold critical difficulties from an ecological perspective. But the dynamics of the social imaginary itself also hold a promise that a different, more ecological, way of life is possible.

Key Forms in the Social Imaginary of the West

Taylor argues that the moral order that shapes the social imaginary of Western modernity is based on the concepts of individual rights and mutual benefit. Beginning in the seventeenth century, the notions that society was constituted by rational beings and that governing powers could be challenged began to take hold. Gradually these ideas infiltrated various segments of the society—classes, races, genders, and ethnic groups. They shaped and were shaped by three main cultural forms: the economy, democratic self-rule, and the public sphere.¹⁷ Each of these forms has significant implications for the subsequent ecological crisis. The specificity of the forms and the dynamic manner in which they arose, however, demonstrate both the malleability of the social imaginary and the possibility of alternatives as practices are transformed or as new ones emerge.

Taylor explains the sources of these three main cultural forms in a much more complex way than we can here.¹⁸ It is not our purpose to give a full account of the emergence of the modern social imaginary as he does. Rather we give a somewhat schematic account to illustrate the manner in which ideas and practice interweave; that is, how they are imagined and incorporated in the formation of an ever-changing social imaginary.

The Economy

The specific capitalist form of the economy in the West originates with ideas of Adam Smith (at least they are considered to be best articulated by him). Briefly, what is significant for our purposes is the way in which the relationships among creatures came to be redefined. Prior to the theories Adam Smith articulated, the hierarchical distribution of power in the human world was believed to originate in the order of the cosmos itself. What emerged was the understanding that the source of power lay within the human world.

It is within this context that Smith articulated his economic theory. He assumed a world governed by humans for their own purposes, rather than a world in which the distribution of power was received from divine or cosmic sources. As they gradually interacted with and changed practice, Smith's theories led to the belief that by concentrating on building one's own wealth, one benefited the whole society through the working of “the invisible hand.” Self-interest becomes benevolence. According to Taylor, this kind of profitable exchange for the sake of security and mutual benefit becomes the metaphor for the whole political society.¹⁹ We come to see society itself as an economy, “an interlocking set of activities of production, exchange and consumption, which form a system with its own set of laws and its own dynamic.”²⁰ This is now a system that is separate from the polity. It functions by its own laws, laws that humans need to know in order to live within society. Further, these laws, which in their origins gave specific answers to specific economic questions, now have taken on the character of abstract principles that are immutable and unarguable.²¹

It is worth noting and an illustration of how particular elements of imagined futures change over time that Smith presumed a certain kind of community interest and civic responsibility as part of one's self-interest. So his theories and the manner of their practice in his own day become quite different historically as that sense of community gives way to a much more individualistic society.²²

The Public Sphere

Although the economy may have been the first to disengage itself, it paved the way for other forms to take on independent existence. However, while the economy depends largely on individual activities, the public sphere and democratic self-governance stem from a new notion of the collectivity and its power and function.

The public sphere relies for its existence on the notion of secularity and its sense of profane time, which is discussed more fully below where we examine the role of religion in the social imaginary of the modern West. The public sphere is not identical to any given or officially constituted government, but rather has power over it. Taylor describes it as that public space in which discussion, via various media, produces a public opinion. Thus it is a metatopical agency. It is metatopical in that it is nonlocal and transcends any one assembly or topic of discussion. It is an agency because it has power, a perception of itself as an entity that stands outside the political order and exerts...

Table of contents

• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Introduction
• CHAPTER 1 The Social Imaginary…
• CHAPTER 2 The Emergence of Ecotheology
• CHAPTER 3 Imagined Futures
• CHAPTER 4 Theology and the Ecological…
• CHAPTER 5 Science and Ecology
• CHAPTER 6 Global and Local…
• CHAPTER 7 Living As If
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography